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Sometimes, we think people who have succeeded knew all along the whole thing would work out.

They had some crazy amount of confidence and insight from the get go.

They are super human in their ability to pick the right projects and then see them to completion.

That is a lie. Nobody knows if something will work or not. They don’t. Ask Jim Parsons, he plays the wildly popular Sheldon on the show, “The Big Bang Theory.”

When asked about the show by radio host Dan Patrick, he immediately said, “I had no idea that the show would be popular. Even after we filmed the first seven episodes I didn’t have a sense of whether people would like it.”

Don’t be discouraged if you can’t tell if what you are working on right now will work.

We live in the screen saturated culture which often distracts/or prevents some from building healthy relationships – so limiting cell phone use and teaching how to give and receive feedback are essential.

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Google’s Project Oxygen created buzz several years ago when they concluded, after deep research, that the typical success of an individual employed at the tech juggernaut was based on Emotional Intelligence and not the assumed stellar STEM acumen (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math).

Now, its recent discovery about Team High-Performance also upended the team development paradigms through Project Aristotle. The content below was quoted from their research.

First, researchers discovered which variables were notsignificantly connected with team effectiveness at Google:

Colocation of teammates (sitting together in the same office)

Consensus-driven decision making

Extroversion of team members

Individual performance of team members

Workload size

Seniority

Team size

Tenure

So what was the magic sauce for High Team Performance at the Tech Giant?

If these 5 aren’t blooming on your team, first ask yourself if there are politics, egos and drama at play.

But how do you start building these into the culture of your team? They first come from the overflow of the leader- both the immediate team director and their senior leaders. You can even have a dynamic team leader, but the senior leader(s) directly affect the energy, focus and emotional energies of a department.

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I recently read an interview with Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of a small electric company called General Electric.

He was asked by host Charlie Rose, “What is the most important lesson you have learned in the last ten years as the CEO of GE?”

Without hesitation Jeffrey answered.

He said, “I think it’s humility and the curiosity that comes with it. In other words, the big mistakes you make are when you stop asking questions, but if you’re hungry and humble and you are always digging for that extra piece of knowledge…that’s how the world works.”

While it is somewhat fashionable for CEO’s and thought leaders to list humility in leadership as one of the most desired qualities, I think there is a kernel of truth in it.

Here are the three powerful words that sum up this type of humility : “I Don’t Know”.

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Last week, I saw an ad for a luxury travel company. The tag line for the vacations they offer is, “Come back new.”

The promise is if you go on one of their trips, you’ll come back new.

Although I think that’s a bit of an overpromise, there’s only one word they got wrong.

The tag line should have said, “Come back you,” because ultimately that’s what we all want.

That’s why we do diets and write books and start businesses. We believe we are capable of more.

We believe that there is more to us than meets the eye. We believe that life or bad decisions have covered up a piece of us that is vital. Even if parents and friends and bosses don’t believe in us, that small voice that says “What if?” persists.

New Year’s Resolutions are often our attempt to uncover what has lain dormant and hidden for far too long. It’s our attempt to dream and do, which is perfect because there’s something you need to know.

We don’t need you to be new, we need you to be you. The world is currently short one you.

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I’m sitting in a hotel room, traveling for some coaching appointments scheduled for tomorrow.

I bet you can’t guess what I did right before writing this?

Is your guess “lifting weights” because I’m huge? I appreciate that, but that’s not what I was doing.

Prior to sitting down to write this short blog post, I was watching clips of the best blind auditions on the show “The Voice.” (Did you know Keith Urban is a judge on the Australian version of the Voice? That felt like he was cheating on American Idol.)

Why was I doing that? Because I needed to get inspired to write.

I spent the day traveling from home to nice southern town in Kentucky…but it was a dreary, grey day and writing is the last thing I wanted to do.

So, I went to one of my standbys for a quick hit of inspiration, Voice auditions.

Is that a little weird? It is.

So is watching the, “How you do you like dem apples” scene in Good Will Hunting.

I do a lot of weird things, but here’s a secret. They work. Getting motivated isn’t a science. It’s an art, a messy art.

On any given day, there are about a billion things that can bring you down.

Quarterly taxes.

Arguing about politics.

Internet trolls.

Your bank account.

That sound your car started making that you pretended was just other cars near you but you can no longer deny it. The list goes on and on. Demotivators, not technically a word which in and of itself bums me out, don’t play fair. Why should we?